Finally social benefits encourage tenants

They are sometimes called "chavs", when they are young and vulgar. Or the "white lumpenproletariat" to encompass all the generations of these popular classes living in the English suburbs. A "social subclass", some even more bluntly designated by the term "white trash" (literally "waste white"), imported from the United States. It is certain: these citizens of the poor strata of the population will not move en masse, tomorrow, to vote. The policy of most interest. Many of these young people are band, idle, hidden behind a hood, wearing clothing with the showy brands such as Burberry tartan, and holding on a leash of the rottweilers and the pitbulls. Popular newspapers tell in detail the various facts in which they are involved. Stories terrifying, like this mother and her disabled daughter, so harassed by offenders of this kind that they eventually commit suicide by setting fire to their car... With age, the cliché is more benign. It represents the playing bingo in dingy pubs, a pint of beer in hand, or bet on racing greyhounds in these specialized institutions found in the shopping streets of the country. In this case, they always surprised by their resignation.

As many stereotypes that provide course as a partial image of these unreached of British society. But sometimes very useful stereotypes... They indeed allow both elites from right to left to denigrate this part of the nation. Actually regardless of the problem.

The economic crisis of 2007 has worsened things. Today, it is a fact: Britain is more concerned about this category of the population. If experts, as John Hills, the author of the most comprehensive report on inequalities ever undertaken Revel, decrying "the term of subclass entirely excluded from society" and noted that "inequality also affect ethnic minorities", they recognize that there is a deep malaise in the least privileged whites. All the more painful discomfort that person expresses their helplessness, but their representatives catapulted to fame through reality TV programs. Many associations structuring the life of the "working-class" English have disappeared since the 1980s, and the time is no longer "young people in anger", these artists such as writer Alan Sillitoe, death last week, author of "Saturday night Sunday morning", which had put the proletariat of the industry and the nobility of its ways on the front of the stage in the 1960s. As said recently a columnist of the "Guardian" pastichant a song of John Lennon, a "working class hero" is now a rarity.

The real losers in the recession

There is a little more than a year, Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Commission for equality and the implementation by labour human rights in 2007, in any case felt that poor whites were the true losers of the recession. According to him, it must be recognized in some parts of the country that "the color of the disadvantage is Brown, not white", with. The irony is that much of this population is now regarded as an oppressée minority. According to a poll organised by the BBC in March 2008, at the time of a series broadcast on white proletarian classes, which had been loud, 77 of respondents believed that the local population should adapt to the immigrants, and not vice versa. Sign of the times, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is declared the week last "in penance", after having committed a serious error: process of "bounded" a pensioner who had assaulted him on immigration, a highly subject to the "working-class" and the Labour, it should be the natural electorate.

Define the scope of this white population on decommissioning is difficult, even in a country where ethnic statistics are not a taboo. The poor, defined population in Britain as earning less than 60 of median income, i.e. less than 115 pounds per week (excluding costs of housing for an adult) or 279 pounds for a couple with two children, close to the 13.5 million people. Sales on the rise since the recession - approximately 6 million people earn less than 40 of the median wage. It is estimated that 83 of them are white against more than 90 of the population. In proportion, the ethnic minorities in Britain remain so poor: "about 40 of people from ethnic minorities are in the category of low incomes, or twice the rate of the white population," noted recently the NGO Oxfam.

Other statistics are most disturbing. The proportion of the white youths of sixteen to nineteen years, having left school is higher than in most of the ethnic minorities. Most importantly, school performance at the age of sixteen of the children

the poorest, defined as entitled to free meals in the canteen because parents are unemployed, point five "problem groups", including white boys and girls. "Ever since the publication of the statistics that the debate on a so-called white subclass was born, said John Hills.". Ethnic minorities are also disadvantaged. "Always is it that only 6 of poor white boys go to University compared to 26 for those from minorities and 34 for girls of minorities. The young people of Chinese and Indian origin do particularly well in school.

"Anti-social behaviour".

In this universe, crime has also run rampant. British prisons remain populated by whites three quarters, according to the Prison Reform Trust. "In some very disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Britain, especially around Glasgow or Liverpool, white gangs are predominant. "There is a wider problem, in the country of so-called" anti-social ", perpetrated mainly by unemployed white boys," said Gabriel Doctor, researcher at the Centre for Social Justice, a think tank founded by curator Ian Duncan Smith.

Last weekend, almost Barking in East London, a van of the British National Party through the streets with a loudspeaker calling to vote for the BNP, or music. In this district where the British national Front hoped tomorrow to get a good score in the General and local elections, residents are not willingly to questions about the policy. "Nobody hears what we have to say, however said a supporter of the Labour of eighty years.". The representative of the labour party only became interested in we when BNP score rose. The problem is not racism, but the excess of immigrants.

A theme as a leitmotif. One of the main reasons why the "working-class" white and poor estimates suffer particularly is immigration. Much less from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, from the eight Eastern and Central Europe countries which joined the EU in 2004. If it is a little less since the fall of the pound, Britain has been a real eldorado for workers from these countries, so widely opened its doors. Difficult to establish a relationship of cause and effect between this influx of labour force and unemployment of the local population. According to official figures, more than 80 of the 2.12 million new jobs created since 1997 went to immigrants. At the same time, the local labour force has grown to 384.000 persons in the period, taking into account the ageing of the population. Remains as the natives of the United Kingdom suffered more from the crisis in these two years that the immigrants... And the number of inactive born in Britain has not decreased.

The perverse effect of family benefits

Some studies point out: hires, the main handicap of the "working-class" native poorest is his lack of training, its inability to adapt to changes in the labour market. "Many children leave school at sixteen to resume, as in the past, the work of their father, which is now doomed to failure," notes John Hills. Working as a server in Burger King is experienced as "unacceptable for a class of people accustomed to working in the industry", observed as Kjartan Sveinsson, analyst at the Runnymede Trust, a foundation whose mandate is to promote a British company "multi-ethnic harmonious." In a recent report, the Centre for Social Justice denounced also the perverse effects of social allowances. "The rapid withdrawal of the social supports when someone found a work often poorly paid and precarious discourages the return to employment", emphasized. Subsidies are more generous for single parents. "Among the people receiving social aid because they are unemployed, he is often seen as financially stupid to live together", explains Gabriel Doctor. Finally, social benefits encourage tenants. They would therefore discourage savings and access to the property. Perverse effects more noticeable among the poor whites in the immigrant population, "in which the working culture is more widespread", said Gabriel Doctor.

But in the end, the suffering of the poor working class white reflect particularly the persistence of strong inequalities in Britain. "We are one of the most unequal in the world countries and substantial," said John Hills. It is here again to the argument of those who challenge that the poor white people is a social category in part "many whites are poor, because a large part of the population is poor, summarizes Kjartan Sveinsson.". This is not because they are white.